


Irving

by Cicileal



Series: Ashes to Ashes [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Father-Son Relationship, Fucking raiders, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, James doesn't know how to use a fucking gun, Pre-Canon, Single Parents, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 00:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16545005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cicileal/pseuds/Cicileal
Summary: James sneaks into a grocery store to get baby formula for the Lone Wanderer.





	Irving

 

A man carried his son past the walls of a damaged city into the safety of an underground vault. A city where beggars and drunks and whores and criminals nip at his heels beckoning him to turn back, begging him to fix the water that he had promised them so long ago to fix. He was crying and broken and knows that anything down there was better than a lifetime up here. His wife was gone. The project was gone. He needed to push down the guilt, the guilt at leaving his wife’s legacy to this wasteland, leaving these people to rot, leaving Li to carry on without him. But all of it was for the child in his arms. His child was safe. He had to tell himself this, had to tell himself to go on. For him.  
But that didn’t pave the roads to the vault. The people still begged and his child still gaged at the radiation in the milk. He softly tapped on the child's back to keep it from choking, but he always feared his hands were too rough, or the ring he wore would leave a mark, that the child would be hurt by him. His child gagged, but made only few noises beside, too quiet, breathing in shallow breaths and rarely letting out any cries. It scared him. He was a man of science not of child care. He thought that maybe his wife had a gentler hand.

The man often found himself wondering how his wife would care for the child, how she would burp him or feed him or love him. What she would have named him. Not Ashton, not the name that The man had given him, she would never have her child named after the grim that had been left of the world. No, she would have named him something beautiful, something elegant, something kind. Something that he would never think of because he was nothing without her. And now all that was left of her was the ring he wore on his finger, the diamond still glimmering after so many years. A stone meant for their child when he had grown old enough.  
The ring made of pure gold and the child that he was so desperately trying to coax through its first taste of irradiated water. Irradiated milk. The man wondered how long a child could survive without milk.

Six days. It was a time he had read somewhere in a scientific journal, the longest a baby had gone with just water. It was a long time. And he knew his son was weak, born too soon, Would survive four days at the most. And he knew it would take at least seven to reach the vault, more to convince the damned overseer to let them in. No, he would never do that to his child. This child was what was left of his wife, of the life he was leaving behind. He would have protected her at all costs. Would let him drink his own blood if it came to that.

So he tucked the boy in a bush, that was settled just below the parking lot of a shopping center filled with formula. In a ditch where rusted shopping carts littered the ground. Covered his body with warm blankets, and showed him a small toy he had found in an abandoned car, let the boys small fingers wrap around it, and watched him, for just a few moments play with it. He wanted this boy to grow to be a good man, a man who would save this place instead of abandoning it for a vault, who would learn to love things in the way he never truly could love something beyond himself. Maybe he should just go back to Rivet city, finish the work he had so vehemently began, leave his dead wife with a lasting memory, and let his little boy grow up with a hero instead of a liar.  
The boy looked at him, still teething the toy, and smiled. His eyes so filled with glee and happiness and ignorance. The boy didn’t know the harsh hand of the world.  
The man smiled, bringing his finger up to his lips, and hushed his child back to fiddling with the small toy. He got up, and grabbed a nearby shopping cart, setting it on top of the boy, a metal cell fit to lock out all of the horrors of the world. They needed food, and the boy needed safety, and even though it wasn’t the best he could have provided it was the best he could have done at that moment. To hide his little boy.

 

 

Pre-war shopping centers had always seemed to be surprisingly big. Big and always teaming with someone who wanted blood. If he had to guess he would think the locations were good when acting as bait. Food was scarce in the wasteland, water more than food. He knew that, had always known that, knew that these Pre-War shopping centers were some of the few sources that had either. It was the perfect place to set up a trap.  
Even the smart ones would be lured in eventually, seduced by hunger and desperation, working, bleeding to get to rivet city before supplies ran out, but more often than not they would need food. And the only supplies would be these stores. Where the dangers had laid traps.  
In this one it was raiders, sitting by the lit fire, smoking, talking, fucking, like animals waiting in ambush. And the store was absolutely silent aside from the crackling of the fire and the moans he could only sparsely hear. He hoped that they would distract themselves, they were always too high or drunk to really be on alert, it was the only thing that he and the rest of the people in the wasteland could rely on when trying to escape these damn psychopaths.

He brought his hands together and ran a thumb over the diamond ring, a soothing mechanism, one that reminded him of his wives soft fingers. He looked back over to the food aisle, unopened cans had been piled between the shelves of several of the lanes, one of which he could see bottles of water and another where he could see the baby formula.  
He needed to get them, but he was sure that going to those piles would trigger some kind of trap, or alarm, and he had nothing to defend himself with. A gun? Yes. Bullets? No. He could threaten, but he doubted that raiders would adhere to anything he had to say. He wasn’t going to risk dying now. Not after everything.  
He thought that he might just scour the edges, take the little supplies there was and try to ration it enough to get them to the vault. They didn’t need more than they could carry anyways, and taking everything would just lead to problems.

So he began on the first row, taking a few cans of food, and anything that he could have fed a baby, applesauce, canned milk, things that were soft enough for his child to digest. They weren’t ideal, and he had hoped to avoid them if at all possible, but if worse came to worst, they would be a necessity for Ashton.  
It didn’t take long for him to reach the aisle where there a few different types of formula were scattered just an arm's length away. The man could see some in the middle of the aisle, but he could also see a few pressure plates, and loose strings hidden under the rubble, just as he had predicted. It was best if he just stuck with the outer edges, there seemed to be enough for at least a week.

He had brought a large backpack and filled it with as much of the formula as he could reach. Even used the gun to grab the jars furthest from him, but in the end, only found a few jars of the formula, and even few bottles of water, but he believed it was enough, he would drink whatever they found on the road and he would give the pure water to Ashton. Rationing. It was simple from here, just needed to get out, just needed to find his son.  
But he had to stop when large footsteps broke the delicate silence. He pushed himself between two of the shelves, lowering his breath so all that echoed throughout the shopping center was the What the fucks, and scattering of the raiders. He looked for the source of the noise deciding it was not the fault of the raiders but rather some idiot who didn’t know the first thing about survival. Best just wait it out, maybe even grab some more of the canned milk or formula before he left.  
But before anything else, a calloused hand reached in between the two isles grabbing for him. He tried to duck out of the way, sink back so he disappeared, run, but he knew that there was a tripwire waiting for him at the other side. He was trapped.

 

“Get out there _James_ , we know who the fuck you are.” The voice was too close. Too gruff. Too dangerous.

 

“I don’t think you want that little boy of yours to be hurt now. Do you.”

 

That was bad. He knew that there was a possibility of the boy being found that maybe the dangers of this shopping center were worse than the benefits, but he had to try. For Ashton. For his son.

He slowly crawled out from between the isles, his hands placed in neutral position up, showing the unloaded ten-millimeter pistol laced into his belt buckle at his side. There was a knife tucked in the hem of his pants, a trick his wife had taught him, but he decided he wouldn’t need that, and if he did he wouldn’t survive.  
There were two men and two women standing before him, all dressed in the typical raider attire, with guns trained on him. They weren’t particularly good guns, homemade modifications, and clearly stolen from the display cases inside the store, but they had numbers, and he just knew that there were others hidden in the large darkness of the store. But the biggest advantage they had over him was the thing one of the women had rested in her arms. Instead of holding a gun like the rest, she had a few blankets wrapped thickly over one another, a small baby. Ashton.

 

“You know who we are?”

 

“Raiders.”

 

“No… Maybe. Depends on the definition, but we prefer the term mercenary, only kill folk who wander on our turf. Who steal out supplies. Maybe even the assholes who have a bounty.”

The woman who had spoken, the one with the gun, seemed to have been chewing something, a piece of tobacco maybe, when she spit it out he could see the blackness of her teeth.

 

“You know James, you’ve broken all three. And this baby of yours is the reason all of us are sitting here guarding the only clean water in this irradiated shit hole,” she approached the woman who had Ashton in her arms, and pushed the gun, hard enough against him that he let out a small sputtering sound. Not a cry, but had Ashton been healthier it would have been. Then she took him from the other woman’s arms, and began rocking him, cooing him, as though she wasn’t the reason for his fit, “You two would make us a pretty penny.”

 

“Leave him be. Do what you want to me, but he hasn’t done a thing.”

 

The woman tsked. “You know James, I kinda expected more from you than this whole ‘take me instead of him’ scene. You know how many people have said that to me right?”

 

“Look whatever you want take it. Just leave him be.” She was looking down at him now, a sour smiled gracing her face. She might have been beautiful past the muck and grime.

 

“No. I don’t think so. Look here we look for the biggest… Advantage. Give us somethin’ we want and we’ll let you and your kid go. If not we get our money in other ways.”

 

“Bargaining for an infants life. I don’t care if you consider yourselves mercenaries you are no better than raiders!”

 

“Look James. I like you. Not this little ‘holier than thou’ attitude you have, but I like you. Liked your work before you decided to run away. Even liked your wife before she died.” She paused, glancing down at his finger, and smiling,

 

"That,” She waved her gun in the direction of his finger, “I want that and you and your kid can go.”

She began to approach him, gun still raised to his crying son's temple, and still rocking him back and forth in a mother-like way.

 

“What?”

 

“The ring. I know you ain’t stupid. I could see that damn thing the moment you stepped into that door. Just give it here and you can have your son back. I’ll tell you what if the things real gold I’ll even through in the formula how ‘bout that.” She grinned, close to him and he nearly gagged at the disgusting smell.

He didn’t want to give up the ring. It had been his wife’s would be his sons, but there was nothing he could do, nothing if he wanted his son to be fine. So he grabbed at the ring, pulling it off his finger. And nearly throwing it at the women.

She caught it and moved swiftly away from him, Blocking his view of his son and whatever she was doing to the ring.

 

“Damn… The things got fuckin’ diamonds too….” She approached the other woman standing back now, handing his son to her as she walked by.

 

p>“Irving, give James here his son and grab somea that baby powder shit too. This thing has got to be worth a fortune.” The girl’s nose shriveled at the simple tasks, but from the way the woman carried herself and how young Irving (hardly more than twelve), she was clearly the dominant figure, she would control the girl and everyone else in the room.

Irving approached him, shoving Ashton into his arms, and causing the boy to cry more than he already was. Then she made her way into the isles, stepping past the meticulously placed traps and to the pile of food where she spent a few moments digging for the formula James had been looking for.

 

“This world is cruel James. Takes. Maybe that boy will learn faster than you.” Irving had returned now, dropping the formula onto the ground by James’ feet.  
He lowered himself to the ground never taking his eyes off Irving, who had a gun pointed between his eyes. James was slow about it, languid arm movements placing each jar of the formula into his bag separately, with one hand, and never breaking eye contact with Irving.  
He then got up, walking to the entrance of the shopping center and pausing when his hand touched the door. Looked back at the woman, now staring at the ring on her finger.

 

“Irving. What a pretty name.”


End file.
